View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Frontiers - Publisher Connector PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE published: 13 August 2014 ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION doi: 10.3389/fevo.2014.00049 Coelacanths as “almost living fossils” Lionel Cavin* and Guillaume Guinot Département de Géologie et Paléontologie, Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, Genève, Switzerland Edited by: Since its usage by Darwin (1859), the concept of “living fossil” has undergone multiple Zerina Johanson, Natural History definitions and has been much discussed and criticized. Soon after its discovery in Museum, UK 1938, the coelacanth Latimeria was regarded as the iconic example of a “living fossil.” Reviewed by: Several morphological studies have shown that the coelacanth lineage (Actinistia) has David Marjanovic,´ UMR 7207, Austria not displayed critical morphological transformation during its evolutionary history and Gaël Clément, Museum National molecular studies have revealed a low substitution rate for Latimeria, indicating a slow d’Histoire Naturelle, France genetic evolution. This statement, however, has been recently questioned by arguing *Correspondence: that the low substitution rate was not real, and that the slow morphological evolution Lionel Cavin, Département de of actinistians was not supported by paleontological evidence. The assessment of Géologie et Paléontologie, Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, 1 rue morphological transformation among three vertebrate lineages during a time interval of Malagnou, CP6434, 1211 Genève 6, circa 400 million years shows that the morphological disparity of coelacanths is much Switzerland more reduced than the morphological disparity of Actinopterygii and Tetrapoda. These e-mail: [email protected] results support the idea that living coelacanths are singular organisms among the living world. Keywords: coelacanths, tetrapods, ray-finned fishes, fossil record, morphological disparity INTRODUCTION genome are mostly based on studies of the HOX gene clusters The African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae)andthe (2 among 12). At the same time, the full genome sequencing of Indonesian coelacanth (L. menadoensis)aretheonlyliving Latimeria chalumnae was made available (Amemiya et al., 2013), representatives of the Actinistia, a sarcopterygian clade that and its study provided ambivalent results with respect to Casane appeared in the fossil record in the Early Devonian, circa 400 and Laurenti’s view by showing that protein-coding genes are million years ago. These fishes have been nicknamed “living significantly more slowly evolving than those of tetrapods, unlike fossils” because they apparently meet some of the conditions other genomic features. of the original usage of this notion by Charles Darwin. Darwin Casane and Laurenti (2013) also questioned the morpholog- (1859) regarded some animal taxa as “anomalous forms [that] ical stability of Actinistia by arguing that no fossils of the genus may almost be called living fossils” because “new forms will Latimeria have been found so far, suggesting that morphological have been more slowly formed,” they are “remnants of a once differences between extant and extinct coelacanths are impor- preponderant order” and “they connect to a certain extent tant enough to be grouped into distinct genera. They also stated orders now widely separated in the natural scale.” Since then, that the morphological stability of coelacanths is not supported the term “living fossils” has acquired another meaning, i.e., by paleontological evidence, and illustrated the actinistian mor- species that were found as fossils before they were found as living phological disparity by comparing the body morphology of nine forms, a definition also relevant for the coelacanths. We focus extinct genera ranging in age from the Lower Devonian to the here on one aspect of this multiform definition: coelacanths Cretaceous along with the Recent Latimeria. Among anatomical as potential slowly evolving organisms. Several morphological structures taken as examples of characters varying through time, studies have shown that the coelacanth lineage has not displayed they listed the number of vertebral elements, the ratio between critical morphological transformation during its evolutionary the abdominal and the caudal regions, and pointed out differ- history following an early diversification episode in the Devonian ences in the general body morphology. They briefly compared (Schaeffer, 1952; Cloutier, 1991; Forey, 1998; Schultze, 2004; the anatomy of Latimeria with the Cretaceous Macropoma and Friedman and Coates, 2006) and several molecular studies noticed differences concerning the orientation of the gape and the revealed a low genomic substitution rate for Latimeria for some shape and relative proportions of some skull bones. categories of genes at least (Amemiya et al., 2013 and references Here we address the issue of coelacanth morphological trans- therein). In a recent paper, however, Casane and Laurenti (2013) formations through deep time. We do not question the state- questioned the status of “living fossils” for coelacanths as slowly ment that morphological differences are observed between extinct evolving organisms. They challenged the low substitution rate actinistian taxa and Latimeria but rather test whether morpho- in Latimeria genome by scanning publications dealing with logical changes occurred in actinistians at the same pace as in nuclear gene analyses. A majority of studies (8 among 12 papers) other comparable major vertebrate lineages by comparing rate indicates no conclusive evidence for a slow evolution of the of anatomical novelties acquisition along corresponding evolu- coelacanth genome, and those pointing out a slowly evolving tionary trajectories. Although computations of morphological www.frontiersin.org August 2014 | Volume 2 | Article 49 | 1 Cavin and Guinot Coelacanths as “almost living fossils” acquisitions along the actinistian lineage were performed by sev- in Casane and Laurenti’s phylogeny—is not the oldest known eral authors (Schaeffer, 1952; Forey, 1988, 1998; Cloutier, 1991; representative of this clade, the patterns of the three compared Schultze, 2004), their purpose was to assess fluctuations of mor- cladograms slightly differ at their bases. Moreover, a few choices phological changes and not to compare transformations rates were made between concurrent phylogenies, such as, for instance, with other clades, as proposed here. the placement of Dialipina as sister group of all other ray-finned fishes (Zhu et al., 2009). COMPARING EVOLUTIONARY HISTORIES OF VERTEBRATE The three calibrated cladograms represent the evolutionary LINEAGES histories of the coelacanth, hummingbird and perch during a sim- In order to address the issue of morphological transforma- ilar time interval of almost 400 million years. In a second step, we tions through time, we selected three clades of crown-group searched in literature for uniquely derived morphological char- vertebrates: the Actinistia (coelacanths), the tetrapods (here acter states that occurred along the corresponding internodes of encompassing Tetrapoda and their closest relatives), and the the three cladograms. A uniquely derived character is a charac- Actinopterygii (ray-finned fishes) (Figure 1) and propose phy- ter that “has evolved only in one direction on a single occasion logenetic reconstructions of corresponding extant genera, the in the history of the group” (LeQuesne, 1972). Uniquely derived coelacanth (Latimeria), a hummingbird (Trochilus)andtheperch characters,referredtoasuniqueapomorphiesbelow,mayormay (Perca)(Figure 2). The Chondrichthyes (chondrichthyans) and not include unambiguous character transformations. The rate of the Dipnoi (lungfishes) could not be included in this study unique apomorphies acquisition per million years is calculated because the post-Paleozoic fossil record of these clades lacks suf- for the three lineages by dividing the total number of unique apo- ficient taxa represented by complete and articulated specimens, morphies by 400 (Figure 2B). Because of the different patterns which prevents homogeneous comparison with the other extant between the basal part of the three phylogenies, and because of the clades considered. The phylogenetic reconstructions presented taxonomic uncertainties mentioned above, the number of unique here are based on a similar model as in the Figure 1 of Casane apomorphies in the three lineages were also computed by exclud- and Laurenti (2013), but with the notable difference that they ing the basalmost nodes, i.e., by excluding Miguashaia and the are plotted against a time frame (Figure 2A). For each actinis- clade Holopterygius + Allenypterus in actinistians, Panderichthys tian terminal taxon retained in the original figure of Casane and in the tetrapod lineage and Dialipina in actinopterygians. Laurenti (2013), we looked for approximately coeval tetrapod and In this case, we consider an average total time interval of ray-finned fish taxa, which have been proposed as close relatives 360 Ma for calculating unique apomorphy acquisition per million of hummingbird and perch, respectively. Because of the incom- years. pleteness of the fossil record, variations in the stratigraphic ranges For actinistians, we used the set of characters from Dutel et al. occur for some of the corresponding genera between the three (2012), which are coded for all genera under consideration, and lineages, and the selected taxa do not represent the closest phy- the set of characters from Zhu et